Dr Christina Karakizi
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Post Doc Fellow
My profile
Biography
I am a Surveyor engineer with a MSc in Geoinformatics and I got my Doctoral Degree in Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens on the topic of Land Cover and Crop Type Mapping using Remote Sensing Data. I have participated in several research and industrial projects on the topics of Remote Sensing, Earth Observation, Land Cover, Vegetation and Crop type Mapping and Precision Agriculture.
I am currently working as a Research Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Manchester Metropolitan University under the EU-funded SAV-EO project, that targets mapping and monitoring of the fractional woody cover over the entire southern African savannah region employing optical and radar satellite data and novel remote sensing methodologies
Impact
As a researcher in the first year of my post doc career, the impact of my work up to now is primarily depicted on the findings of my doctoral dissertation:
https://www.didaktorika.gr/eadd/handle/10442/51551?locale=en
In this dissertation we have thoroughly studied different aspects of land cover and crop type mapping using multitemporal multispectral satellite data of high spatial resolution. Recent advances from cutting-edge international research efforts were described and discussed. Critical intermediate processing steps were examined through experimentation and by comparing best practices with the recent relevant published literature.
The main contribution of the dissertation was the development of an efficient mapping framework that exploits high resolution multispectral satellite data for the production of annual land cover and crop type maps at national scale. Novel aspects of our approach rely on the exploitation of radiometrically, geometrically and temporally consistent Sentinel-2 data along with an experimentally-validated and highly reliable training dataset, created for 42 thematic classes matched to the Greek landscape. Under the proposed framework, selected spectral and auxiliary features were successfully employed using machine learning classification techniques, while their respective contribution has been thoroughly assessed. The performed rigorous external validation, which was completely independent from the mapping procedures, resulted into an overall accuracy of 82%. Average user’s accuracy for the 17 non-crop classes was estimated at approx. 85%, while for the 25 different crop types at 79%. Major arable crops (e.g., cereals, grass fodders, industrial crops) which cover most of the agricultural land in Greece, resulted into an average user accuracy level above 87%.
To the best of our knowledge, this dissertation resulted in the first land cover map for Greece at 10m spatial resolution with such a thematic analysis and such levels of accuracy and reliability. Furthermore, we hold in high regard the fact that the developed mapping framework was implemented based on free and open software, while the execution of the main large scale experiments was performed in the greek national HPC research infrastructure at GRNET.
Projects
2022-2024: EU H2020 Marie Curie ‘SAV-EO’ Project: “Land Degradation Neutrality: Towards an Earth Observation-based Early Warning System for Savannah Degradation”
2022: EU H2020 FET ‘RAMONES’: Radioactivity Monitoring in Ocean Ecosystems
2021: EU H2020 ‘iToBoS’: Intelligent Total Body Scanner for Early Detection of Melanoma
2020-2021: ‘Carbon Regions Transition Master Plan’, NTUA Research Committee
2019-2020: ‘Assessment of social, economic and environmental aspects for the estimation of the bearing capacity of Thira (Santorini) Municipality’, SUPCO, Ellet
2018: ‘CORINE Land Cover 2018 production - HRL’s 2015 verification and Urban Atlas 2012 Enrichment’, Copernicus land monitoring services - Hellenic Cadastre
2016-2017: ‘LandMAP’: Multitemporal Land Use/ Land Cover Mapping at National Scale from High Resolution Satellite Data with Deep Learning, Research Projects for Excellence IKY/SIEMENS, NTUA
2016-2017: ‘Land cover products validation and intercomparison in the South Central and Eastern European Regional Information Network (SCERIN) area’, SCERIN, Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics, NASA, START, NTUA
2014-2015: ‘Automatic Detection and Modelling of 2D and 3D changes in the urban environment from multi-modal, multi-temporal remote sensing data’, THALES Programme, MIS 380134, co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund – ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning” of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)
Teaching
October 2016 - April 2022: Teaching Assistant at the School of Rural, Surveying and Geoinformatics Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Courses: I. Digital Image Analysis for Remote Sensing, II. Photo-interpretation and Remote Sensing, III. Summer Field Course in Remote Sensing, IV. Special Applications of Photo-interpretation and Remote Sensing
Supervision of Bachelor and Master Thesis
Research outputs
Link to publications:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2Rj5Z7UAAAAJ&hl=el
-
Journal articles
Gounari, O., Karakizi, C., Karantzalos, K. (2022) 'FILTERING LPIS DATA FOR BUILDING TRUSTWORTHY TRAINING DATASETS FOR CROP TYPE MAPPING: A CASE STUDY IN GREECE.' The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLIII-B3-2022pp. 871-877.
Karakizi, C., Kandylakis, Z., Vaiopoulos, A.D., Karantzalos, K. (2021) 'JOINT LAND COVER AND CROP TYPE MAPPING USING MULTI-TEMPORAL SENTINEL-2 DATA FROM VARIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL ZONES IN GREECE.' The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLIII-B3-2021pp. 319-326.
Karakizi, C., Tsiotas, I.A., Kandylakis, Z., Vaiopoulos, A., Karantzalos, K. (2020) 'ASSESSING THE CONTRIBUTION OF SPECTRAL AND TEMPORAL FEATURES FOR ANNUAL LAND COVER AND CROP TYPE MAPPING.' The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLIII-B3-2020pp. 1555-1562.
Kandylakis, Z., Falagas, A., Karakizi, C., Karantzalos, K. (2020) 'Water Stress Estimation in Vineyards from Aerial SWIR and Multispectral UAV Data.' Remote Sensing, 12(15) pp. 2499-2499.
Manakos, I., Karakizi, C., Gkinis, I., Karantzalos, K. (2017) 'Validation and Inter-Comparison of Spaceborne Derived Global and Continental Land Cover Products for the Mediterranean Region: The Case of Thessaly.' Land, 6(2) pp. 34-34.
Karakizi, C., Oikonomou, M., Karantzalos, K. (2016) 'Vineyard Detection and Vine Variety Discrimination from Very High Resolution Satellite Data.' Remote Sensing, 8(3) pp. 235-235.
Karakizi, C., Karantzalos, K., Vakalopoulou, M., Antoniou, G. (2018) 'Detailed Land Cover Mapping from Multitemporal Landsat-8 Data of Different Cloud Cover.' Remote Sensing, 10(8) pp. 1214-1214.
Karakizi, C., Oikonomou, M., Karantzalos, K. (2015) 'Spectral Discrimination and Reflectance Properties of Various Vine Varieties from Satellite, UAV and Proximate Sensors.' The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XL-7/W3pp. 31-37.
-
Conference papers
Karakizi, C., Gounari, O., Sofikiti, E., Begkos, G., Karantzalos, K., Symeonakis, E. (2023) 'Assessing the Contribution of Optical and SAR Data for Fractional Savannah Woody Vegetation Mapping.' 2023-July. pp. 3118-3121.
Karakizi, C., Antoniou, G., Karantzalos, K. (2018) 'Towards Joint Land Cover and Crop Type Mapping with Numerous Classes.' In IGARSS 2018 - 2018 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. 22/7/2018 - 27/7/2018. IEEE,
Karakizi, C., Karantzalos, K. (2015) 'Detecting and classifying vine varieties from very high resolution multispectral data.' In IGARSS 2015 - 2015 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. 26/7/2015 - 31/7/2015. IEEE,
-
Theses and dissertations
Career history
2022
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Post Doctoral Fellow, Manchester Metropolitan University
2022
Doctor of Engineering, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)
2015
Master’s degree on Geoinformatics, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)
2013
Intergrated Master of Rural and Surveying Engineering,National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)